Rating: 
Summary: A book without implementation details, but hard to beat
Review: "The Practice of System and Network Administration" (TPOSANA) sat on my shelf for nearly a year before I read it. I wish now I'd read it a year ago! It's rare to find a book useful to both Windows and UNIX system administrators, but rarer still to read one designed to improve one's career and attitude.TPOSANA is a 'framework' book. It teaches you how to think and leaves out the implementation details. System administration isn't all about man pages and tech books. The authors' principles -- simplicity, clarity, generality, automation, communication, and basics first -- will make a good sys admin great and a great sys admin extraordinary. Others have outlined the TPOSANA contents, so I'll share my favorite aspects of the book. The writing is lively and witty, with memory-jogging conclusions nicely summarizing each chapter's contents. The text is filled with dozens of applicable and informative case studies. Finally, the authors devote seven chapters to fundamental management and personal attitude issues, showing they know people and processes matter as much as products. I highly recommend TPOSANA. The sad irony is those most needing to read this book will push it aside, as I initally did. Those who take the time to read it will be glad they did. Anyone acting in a technical capacity -- sys admins, engineers, and programmers -- will find it enlightening and entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: A book without implementation details, but hard to beat
Review: "The Practice of System and Network Administration" (TPOSANA) sat on my shelf for nearly a year before I read it. I wish now I'd read it a year ago! It's rare to find a book useful to both Windows and UNIX system administrators, but rarer still to read one designed to improve one's career and attitude. TPOSANA is a 'framework' book. It teaches you how to think and leaves out the implementation details. System administration isn't all about man pages and tech books. The authors' principles -- simplicity, clarity, generality, automation, communication, and basics first -- will make a good sys admin great and a great sys admin extraordinary. Others have outlined the TPOSANA contents, so I'll share my favorite aspects of the book. The writing is lively and witty, with memory-jogging conclusions nicely summarizing each chapter's contents. The text is filled with dozens of applicable and informative case studies. Finally, the authors devote seven chapters to fundamental management and personal attitude issues, showing they know people and processes matter as much as products. I highly recommend TPOSANA. The sad irony is those most needing to read this book will push it aside, as I initally did. Those who take the time to read it will be glad they did. Anyone acting in a technical capacity -- sys admins, engineers, and programmers -- will find it enlightening and entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: A book without implementation details, but hard to beat
Review: "The Practice of System and Network Administration" (TPOSANA) sat on my shelf for nearly a year before I read it. I wish now I'd read it a year ago! It's rare to find a book useful to both Windows and UNIX system administrators, but rarer still to read one designed to improve one's career and attitude. TPOSANA is a 'framework' book. It teaches you how to think and leaves out the implementation details. System administration isn't all about man pages and tech books. The authors' principles -- simplicity, clarity, generality, automation, communication, and basics first -- will make a good sys admin great and a great sys admin extraordinary. Others have outlined the TPOSANA contents, so I'll share my favorite aspects of the book. The writing is lively and witty, with memory-jogging conclusions nicely summarizing each chapter's contents. The text is filled with dozens of applicable and informative case studies. Finally, the authors devote seven chapters to fundamental management and personal attitude issues, showing they know people and processes matter as much as products. I highly recommend TPOSANA. The sad irony is those most needing to read this book will push it aside, as I initally did. Those who take the time to read it will be glad they did. Anyone acting in a technical capacity -- sys admins, engineers, and programmers -- will find it enlightening and entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for all sysadmins (and their bosses!)
Review: An impressive and useful piece of work. The authors have put into writing the broad range of principles, processes, and best practices that are normally only learned and developed through years of intensive experience. Furthermore, they have managed to do it almost entirely in a platform- and technology-neutral way. This is exceptionally valuable in a field which is often strongly polarized and tool-oriented. And as a bonus, it is written with a sense of humor. Highly recommended for anyone interested or involved in system administration.
Rating:
Summary: A must have for any sysadmin, regardless of skill level
Review: As a UNIX sysadmin veteran, I wish this book had been around when I started out. It would have saved so many headaches as I "learned the hard way." Though not a nitty gritty technical book, this one is a must have for every sysadmin, regardless of skill level or the technology s/he uses. For the novice admin, it offers a good big picture look at the most important "whys" of system administration. For the intermediate admin, it has great advice on how to balance fire fighting with project work that will lessen the need for the fire fighting. For the senior admin, there are gems of design wisdom and sections on how to deal with being in a managerial or team leader role. Because it's more high level, this book is even a good buy for people who manage sysadmins but are not themselves technical. The chapters are conveniently split into the "basics" and the "icing," depending on the skill of the reader and the state of the reader's work environment. The authors back up their sound advice with real world case studies and personal experiences. Best of all, not only was it a good read cover to cover, it's organized so that the reader can come back to it as a reference later. Kudos to Tom and Christine for writing an excellent book, one which I will certainly be recommending to my clients and colleagues!
Rating:
Summary: A must have for any sysadmin, regardless of skill level
Review: As a UNIX sysadmin veteran, I wish this book had been around when I started out. It would have saved so many headaches as I "learned the hard way." Though not a nitty gritty technical book, this one is a must have for every sysadmin, regardless of skill level or the technology s/he uses. For the novice admin, it offers a good big picture look at the most important "whys" of system administration. For the intermediate admin, it has great advice on how to balance fire fighting with project work that will lessen the need for the fire fighting. For the senior admin, there are gems of design wisdom and sections on how to deal with being in a managerial or team leader role. Because it's more high level, this book is even a good buy for people who manage sysadmins but are not themselves technical. The chapters are conveniently split into the "basics" and the "icing," depending on the skill of the reader and the state of the reader's work environment. The authors back up their sound advice with real world case studies and personal experiences. Best of all, not only was it a good read cover to cover, it's organized so that the reader can come back to it as a reference later. Kudos to Tom and Christine for writing an excellent book, one which I will certainly be recommending to my clients and colleagues!
Rating:
Summary: Moving from "Good" to "Great" in your sysadmin career
Review: Good sysadmins know the technical details. They can resurrect a dead server, understand the intricacies of sendmail or the Windows registry, and recite all of the types of DNS records by heart. They own copies of the UNIX System Administration Handbook and refer to them regularly. They are good sysadmins, and will contribute solidly at an intermediate level. Great sysadmins know all of that and what is in this book. They are the ones who go on to become the senior sysadmins and consultants, have fabulous careers, and are respected by their bosses, co-workers, and customers. There is much more to a technical job than simply the technical skills. Don't buy this book to learn how to run a system or you will be disappointed. Do, however, buy it to learn how to be an effective professional systems administrator. It is also useful for a manager of sysadmins who is either non-technical, or has never been a sysadmin himself, as it is a good introduction to the issues and concerns that sysadmins need to face. Limoncelli and Hogan cover many topics, including: - Trouble ticket systems
- Desktops and Servers (how they're the same, differ, etc.)
- Administrative networks (why bother?)
- Requirements (gathering, tracking, etc.)
- Standards and centralization of services
- How to do debugging (not "you see this problem, do this" but rather learning the process of doing good debugging)
- Fix things once, not over and over again
- Security policies (including management and organizational issues for a variety of organizational profiles)
- Disaster Recovery (again, not how to backup data, but why you'd want to, legal issues, etc.)
- Systems Administration Ethics
- Change management and revision control
- Maintenance windows: what they are and why they're good for both you and your users
- Centralization versus Decentralization
- Helpdesks: sizing, scope, processes, escalation, etc.
- Data centers (many physical facility concerns that sysadmins don't often think of, including how to move a datacenter)
- Managing non-OS software (commercial and free) They will help you answer questions like - Does server hardware really cost more? Do we go with a few expensive servers or many cheap ones?
- What does "redundancy" actually mean?
- Why would we spend money on backups? There's never been an outage...
- What do I do when asked to do something illegal?
- How do I communicate and schedule large system changes?
- How do I do a safe server upgrade?
- They want to decentralize the sysadmin group -- what do we do?
- How do we move our datacenter?
- What sort of policy issues are there with email?
- How do I deal with my customers abusing printers?
- What do we have to worry about if we're implementing remote access (e.g. dialup modem banks) for our users? Finally, they close with an entire section on Management: - How to deal with cost centers, management chains, hiring, customer support, and outsourcing.
- How to manage your customers perceptions and your team's visibility
- How to manage your own happiness (time management, communication, professional development, managing your manager, etc.)
- How to be a technical manager, how to work with non-technical managers, manage your own career growth, etc.
- How to hire good sysadmins, recruiting, interviewing, soft skills, technical skills, employee retention, etc.
- The special concerns around how to fire sysadmins (often problematic, given their higher level of access) They even have a chapter for non-technical managers who are in charge of sysadmins (this entire book would be very useful to give to a non-technical manager who doesn't really 'get it'.) The book closes with three appendixes: A. The Many Role of a System Administrator
B. What to Do When...
C. Acronyms Appendix B is particularly useful, answering a wide variety of questions with solid, practical answers. The skills and concepts in this book are the make-or-break in many careers. They turn you from just another sysadmin into a star performer, sensitive to your customers and the business, able to interact with a wide spectrum of people.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: I agree with some of the worse reviews: This book addresses all the touchy-feely stuff not found in other manuals.
That, however, is what it's for (It's plainly stated on the book! Read the friendly Meta-Manual!) and it <em>is</em> in fact a wonderfully lucidly written cornucopia of information in that field. It also is delightfully platform-independent, even if it is perceivable that the authors have a UNIX background (but which Sysad doesn't?).
It's a simple fact that Sysads get other things wrong more often than the tech stuff: Communicating changes, seeing it all from the user's POV, negotiating (yes, they deal with salary, too), saying "yes" so that it isn't understood as "yes to all"; saying "no" so that it isn't understood as "fsck you!".
That's why we're often hated as arrogant BOfHs. This manual endeavours to fix that, and it just might succeed.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for Sysadmin career development
Review: I am very impressed by this book. I've been a Unix sysadmin
for more than 10 years and this is the best book I have read for
explaining and demonstrating basic and advanced principles
of system administration. And it goes beyond administration
of any particular OS or system type. You could apply this
to your work architecting, supporting, implementing or
administering any computer or network service. I have many technical books. I do not read them all cover
to cover. But I will completely devour this one. I work on a team of 18 (already excellent!) Unix sysadmins.
I would love to have every team member read this book --
our team would be better for it.
you may especially enjoy the section on sysadmin salary negotiations.
Rating: 
Summary: A non technical book on system administration
Review: I'm surprised by the reviews of this item. They almost seem to
have been written by the authors' friends. Also I don't see
why they refer negatively to Mark Burgess's great book Principles of Network and System Administration, which is a
different kettle of fish -- more scientific and less touchy
feely. I like both books, but I prefer Burgess's more direct
approach -- this book seemed to meander around all over.
| 
